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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474245">Just This Once</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne'>ThatAloneOne</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>"PLEASE", "here look its so easy", Fix-It, Gen, or at least me making the argument of "yo you could fix this"</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:48:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>685</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474245</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>All that Cyber knowledge had been poured into her head and the Doctor wasn’t much worried about the Cybermen. She was thinking about Donna. </p>
<p>Or: the Doctor and an attempt to put together the pieces of "external memory technology" and "Donna".</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>The Doctor &amp; Donna Noble, Thirteenth Doctor &amp; Donna Noble</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Just This Once</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMoriarty/gifts">LMoriarty</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For Lanie, who has been harassing me to write Doctor Who fic for a while now. I love you Lanie. Please write <i>your</i> DW fic now it's justice. It's equality.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Doctor had been doing some thinking, ever since the Cyberium. Probably it wasn’t the best idea to be thinking, never went well, but she couldn’t keep herself from it. When the Cyberium had become part of her, it had been such a specific kind of remembering, pulling from memories that weren’t hers but <em>felt</em> like hers. Well. Like they could have been hers, if there had been a little more salt and pepper and regret.</p>
<p>All that Cyber knowledge had been poured into her head and the Doctor wasn’t much worried about the Cybermen. She was thinking about Donna.</p>
<p>See, the problem with Donna had been overload. Humans just didn’t have the spare space to deal with that brain of hers, even back when she’d been a sprightly nine hundred and change. The Doctor wished she’d been able to speak with Jack — ask why he’d been able to remember, when Me hadn’t, when Donna hadn’t — but the answer probably lay in the fact that Rose hadn’t thought about the problem and so it had failed to become one in reality.</p>
<p>On Earth, in the TARDIS, clattering down the streets of a planet of cobblestones, the Doctor thought about the Cyberium. She thought about the way it had stored memories: accessible, apart. Enough knowledge to blow her apart and, well, it <em>had</em> been making an attempt at blowing her apart but that was more a personality problem than anything else. The Doctor didn’t know much about herself these days, but she knew she wouldn’t hurt Donna if she could help it, if she could find any other way. Even if the Doctor just existed in a curling mass of memories, she wouldn’t hurt Donna if there was any chance to be kind instead. He had been so fond of Donna, the whip-crack of her humour and her steadiness when she decided to be sensible.</p>
<p>Someone had to be sensible in the TARDIS. It wasn’t really ever going to be the Doctor.</p>
<p>Now, the Cyberium itself was out of the question. It contained too much data for the Doctor, let alone a poor human who’d already had enough nonsense stuffed into her mind. But… liquid memory storage, accessible upon command but processed on an entirely separate server, oh, that was a thing. That was a clever, clever thing.</p>
<p>The Doctor would only have to tweak a few things, really. Take the concept, remove the universe conquering nonsense, argue with it until it knew how to gobble up out of place memories for external storage and hey presto!</p>
<p>Well. Maybe build a failsafe or two or three. It was Donna, after all. That woman had never met a trouble she didn’t throw herself into the middle of. The Doctor missed Donna like she missed Gallifrey, like the two sadnesses had linked hands somewhere deep inside her and were skipping along in giddy partnership. Donna’s mind had been so <em>bright</em> to her in that moment before she’d known. Another Time Lord’s consciousness, affection and delight and radiant knowledge spilling from the edge to banish the shadows of her mind. And it had been Donna, which made it a thousand times better.</p>
<p>The Doctor still missed Donna. She missed her like missing things was still new and fresh and agonizing, even though she should have been old hat at it by now. She missed her and so she stared down at the mess of silvery memory tech she’d dug out of the TARDIS’s medbay and decided that surely it was time the universe owed her a solid. Just this once, everybody could remember what it was like to <em>live</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>“Heard you needed a doctor,” she said, half-bracing herself for Donna to recognize her and slap her or faint dead away. She hadn’t decided which would be worse.</p>
<p>“Oh, for the headaches?” Donna said, and flung the door open the rest of the way. She looked the same as ever, like she was about to start haggling with a merchant on Arctorus Four who hadn’t even heard of money in the first place. “Come in then. You’ve taken long enough.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is the setup for a fix-it fic that I refuse to write. Okay but seriously though, the show just dumped "oh here's some memory tech that allows you to access memories that are not your own while also storing them <strike>somewhat</strike> safely externally" and then doesn't bring Donna back? Fuck off. Where's my 50k "Doctor gets inspired by the Cyberium and goes back to help Donna" fic. Where is it!!!</p>
<p>Also, the last time I wrote Doctor Who fic was in 2014, which makes it almost six years ago. Please don't expect me to write another Doctor Who fic for about that same period of time. But enjoy this one!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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